1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic device, and more particularly to an electronic device having a charging station.
2. Related Art
With the rapid development of electronic industry, various types of electronic products have been widely applied in people's daily life. For some electronic products, by using a battery module (such as a rechargeable battery) configured therein, these products can be operated without an external power supply, thereby enhancing the convenience of utilizing the electronic products, for example, mobile phones, wireless phones, and intelligent home appliances such as robot cleaners.
Although this type of electronic products can be powered to operate by their own battery modules, due to the limited quantity of electricity of the battery module, upon exhaustion of the electric power of the battery module, the electronic product can be operated again only after the battery module is recharged by a charging station. Thereby, these electronic products are all provided with a charging station for recharging the battery modules.
A robot cleaner and a charging station thereof are taken as an example for illustration below. Generally, the robot cleaner has a control module, a driving module, a wireless signal receiving module, a battery capacity detecting module, and a battery module therein. The control module is electrically connected to the driving module, the wireless signal receiving module, and the battery capacity detecting module, and the battery module is electrically connected to the battery capacity detecting module and the control module. Moreover, a recharging terminal electrically coupled to the battery module is disposed on a lateral surface or bottom surface of the robot cleaner.
The charging station has a charging control module and a wireless signal transmitting module, and a power terminal corresponding to the recharging terminal is disposed on the charging station. The wireless signal transmitting module of the charging station transmits a plurality of wireless signals to ensure a path to the charging station for the robot cleaner. The charging control module controls the specification of the electric power output by the charging station or other electrical characteristics thereof.
In the operation of the robot cleaner, when detecting that the quantity of electricity of the battery module is too low, the battery capacity detecting module of the robot cleaner sends a message to the control module, and the wireless signal receiving module detects a wireless signal transmitted by the wireless signal transmitting module. After the wireless signal receiving module receives the wireless signal, the robot cleaner employs the control module for positioning correction, heads for the charging station by using the driving module, and is connected to the charging station. At this time, the robot cleaner contacts the power terminal of the charging station with the recharging terminal so as to form an electrical conductive state, and thus the robot cleaner is recharged by the charging station.
As for the structural designs, the recharging terminal and the power terminal are both formed of paired positive conducting strips and negative conducting strips, and the conducting strips are configured on the same plane in a manner of alternate arrangement and have a specific size. When the recharging terminal contacts the power terminal, the positive and negative conducting strips of the recharging terminal respectively contact the positive and negative conducting strips of the power terminal, so that the recharging terminal and the power terminal are electrically conducted. In this case, since the positive and negative conducting strips are located on the same plane, when the positive conducting strip of the recharging terminal contacts the positive conducting strip of the power terminal, the negative conducting strip of the recharging terminal also contacts the negative conducting strip of the power terminal at the same time.
At the moment that the positive and negative conducting strips contact at the same time, sparkles may be generated at the contact points quite easily to result in a short circuit, and thus safety concerns are raised against the use of the charging station and the robot cleaner. Moreover, due to the limited sizes of the positive and negative conducting strips, when the robot cleaner to be recharged is connected to the charging station, the robot cleaner and the charging station usually need to be completely aligned in a predetermined direction, so as to make the recharging terminal and the power terminal conducted with each other to perform the recharging operation. The high-precision positioning requirement also increases difficulty in the actual automatic recharging operation.
In addition to the arrangement of the positive and negative conducting strips of the recharging terminal and the power terminal on the same plane, the recharging terminal and the power terminal are respectively exposed on the robot cleaner and the charging station without having a power-off mechanism for preventing touch by mistake. Therefore, if the recharging terminal or the power terminal is damp or contaminated with a liquid, when a user, unaware of this situation, touches the recharging terminal or the power terminal, the user may easily get injured by an electric shock or stroke. Therefore, the configuration of the recharging terminal and the power terminal on the conventional electronic device having a charging station causes safety concerns in use.